In the olden days of gaming, games were graphically simple, based little in reality, and fairly often hard, a triple-threat for many young gamers who could not resist the odd combinations. You could spend hours traveling through a digital world filled with unique enemies and settings and leave with a true lasting memory of that game. The games often challenged you, testing your reflexes or coordination by switching up enemy movements or level design and often forcing you to learn and improvise to continue through the levels. My latest fling with indie gaming, Super House of Dead Ninjas, pulls heavily on these elements.
The game play involves you controlling a ninja down a massive tower, aiming to defeat the terrible demon and its minions that reside within. At your disposal is a host of various melee, ranged, and explosive weapons that can be mixed and matched in your loadout to customize your type of play. A rage system strongly rewards quick and accurate kills while avoiding being injured; kill enough enemies quickly enough without taking a hit, and you become an unkillable minion-slaughtering machine filled with rage. The levels, which are randomly put together from different rooms, and a wide array of enemies makes it difficult, if not impossible, to have the same experience twice. Finally with two difficulty levels, you can play a more relaxing and lower stress game, or have a game where your ninja's life dangles from a thread.
House of Dead Ninjas was originally a game on Adult Swim's website. The game recent move to Steam came with a host of new features, a price tag, and addition of "Super" in the title, and that extra word is definitely earned. The flash game on Adult Swim's website feels just like a flash game; a bit unrefined, fairly little content, and just a bit off in general. Super House of Dead Ninjas feels like a blast from the past though; everything from sound, graphics, and controls have been improved, there's more unlockables, more levels, and just more of everything. I feel like I've easily gotten my money's worth having purchased the game having already sunk a full 8 hours into the game already. And I still have a long, LONG way to go before the game is even warn out for me.